The NZ Herald has an Editorial on last year's phenomenon of Owen Glenn. The Herald ends up seeking to place the Glenn saga on a wider canvass extolling the benefits of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Kiwi ex-pats prowling the globe, most of whom carry a deep affection for this country.
Well, maybe. To our mind, the real significance of the Glenn saga is something the editorial also focused upon. It was Glenn's striking candour and willingness to tell the truth.
But one element of the saga has gone too little noted and the year should not pass without it being observed. The lengths to which Owen Glenn went to ensure the truth became known were a testament to a commitment to this country that is truly remarkable . . . .
Mr Glenn did not sound like a vindictive man when he took steps to straighten the record. He answered reporters' questions in an open, candid manner, sometimes too candid about casual conversations with Helen Clark. He did not seem to hold a grudge against her despite the disgraceful way she had snubbed him at the opening of the business school. But he was clear and straightforward on the questions that mattered: who asked him for money, how it was to be paid, where it went.
When his word was challenged before Parliament's privileges committee he cared enough to come back to the country with telephone records and allow us to compare his candour and consistency with that of Mr Peters. It was no contest. He probably does not appreciate the full scale of the good he has done for New Zealand's public life.
It is an indictment upon public life in New Zealand in 2008 that a candid, truth-telling man, seeking to maintain his public reputation and integrity by telling the truth should appear to us as a radical and rare phenomenon.
Booker Announces the Exposure of Global Warming for What It Is
Christopher Booker, writing in The Telegraph, suggests that 2008 might just prove to be the year when the world will look back and realise that it was the year the hoax was exposed. He writes:
The first, on May 21, headed "Climate change threat to Alpine ski resorts" , reported that the entire Alpine "winter sports industry" could soon "grind to a halt for lack of snow". The second, on December 19, headed "The Alps have best snow conditions in a generation" , reported that this winter's Alpine snowfalls "look set to beat all records by New Year's Day".
Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.
First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.
Ever shriller and more frantic has become the insistence of the warmists, cheered on by their army of media groupies such as the BBC, that the last 10 years have been the "hottest in history" and that the North Pole would soon be ice-free – as the poles remain defiantly icebound and those polar bears fail to drown. All those hysterical predictions that we are seeing more droughts and hurricanes than ever before have infuriatingly failed to materialise.
Even the more cautious scientific acolytes of the official orthodoxy now admit that, thanks to "natural factors" such as ocean currents, temperatures have failed to rise as predicted (although they plaintively assure us that this cooling effect is merely "masking the underlying warming trend", and that the temperature rise will resume worse than ever by the middle of the next decade).
Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.
Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month's Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and "environmentalists" gathered to plan next year's "son of Kyoto" treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for "combating climate change" with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.
Suddenly it has become rather less appealing that we should divert trillions of dollars, pounds and euros into the fantasy that we could reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 80 per cent. All those grandiose projects for "emissions trading", "carbon capture", building tens of thousands more useless wind turbines, switching vast areas of farmland from producing food to "biofuels", are being exposed as no more than enormously damaging and futile gestures, costing astronomic sums we no longer possess.
As 2009 dawns, it is time we in Britain faced up to the genuine crisis now fast approaching from the fact that – unless we get on very soon with building enough proper power stations to fill our looming "energy gap" - within a few years our lights will go out and what remains of our economy will judder to a halt. After years of infantile displacement activity, it is high time our politicians – along with those of the EU and President Obama's US – were brought back with a mighty jolt into contact with the real world.
The Lust for Glory
Steve Maharey has written a piece (hattip, Whaleoil) lamenting our apparent passing up an opportunity to lead the world. He is disappointed about the government's decision to reconsider the Emissions Trading Scheme and regards it as a lost opportunity to inspire the world.
The new government's climate change policy is killing innovation, undermining science and abandoning our role as an inspiration to other countries
One night in 2007 I found myself at an official dinner in Brussels seated next to a man who advised the German government on climate change. We chatted about the role countries could play in the shift to sustainability.
He noted that what New Zealand did would have little impact on the overall problem. Our small size, however, did not excuse us from making a practical contribution. In addition, he said, New Zealand had a very special and more important role to play. “You”, he argued animatedly, “need to be a symbol to the rest of the world of what is possible”.
This small statement goes straight to the heart of what was (and is) so wrong with the left wing in New Zealand. Firstly, it is elitist. It has an abiding aspiration to "be somebody" on the world stage through leading the world. The Left in New Zealand grew up on the mythology of New Zealand being the most "progressive" country in the world at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They dream of recapturing that place in the van of global enlightenment. Maharey evinces it perfectly: he would want us to be an "inspiration" to the rest of the world.
Secondly, the Left is willing to do untold damage to the lives of ordinary New Zealanders in pursuit of its mad ambition. It may speak about compassion and concern--but these are empty and clanging cymbals. It will gladly and willingly impose a heavy burden upon the most vulnerable in pursuit of its mad ambition. The poor are so much cannon fodder along the way to sweeping the enemies of its vaunting ambition aside.
The Emissions Trading Scheme was (and is) economic treachery. When the economy is weakened and constrained through taxes for reasons of propaganda--trying to inspire the rest of the world--it is the poor who suffer. The elitism of the Left is cold, detached, impersonal, calculating, and remote.
Thirdly, the Left is riddled with utopian utilitarianism where the end justifies the means. The greatest good will be served by mankind escaping the perils of man induced global warming. Sacrificing New Zealand along the way is a small price to pay.
Remember how Helen Clark went through a period where she was seeking a defining cause, an aspirational symbol. She alighted upon climate change as the issue that would define her world leadership. She spoke gravely about achieving carbon neutrality. The world press noticed. And the Left noticed that they noticed. From that point on, New Zealand, its people and economy, became a mere beast of burden to be flogged to death in the mad rush to be an inspiration to other countries.
This fanaticism in search of a cause results in a discreditable ignorance and blind prejudice. Maharey cannot avoid displaying his cant, when he laments that New Zealand is going to have to hear from those who do not agree with the speculative theories of man-made global warming. He writes with all the condescension of an arrogant, superior, Left winger:
Those who advance the position that human activity is contributing to climate change are to be set against those who oppose this view – as if they are equals.
Of course they are not. The overwhelming view of the science community is for the former view. A tiny minority oppose this view. They may be right – minority views can be right – but in this instance they will have to work very hard if they are to be taken seriously given the depth of the evidence they are seeking to question.
The "depth of the evidence", huh. Sorry to be the little boy crying out about emperor's lack of clothes, Steve, old boy--but what evidence? When fanatical idealism overtakes hard headed scientific inquiry; when elitist politicians try to use scientific issues to fuel their own vaunting ambition, the end result is a Gorish embarrassment.
Thankfully the scientific community appears to be getting tired of being the propaganda playthings of arrogant politicians. Increasingly scientists are returning to professional, self-respecting scepticism.
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